Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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The Bible is a book—God’s book. Even a child knows this, right? Except that the Bible isn’t a book. Not really. The Bible was at first oral transmission passed from person to person, events and conversations observed, remembered, and shared. But it was still the Bible. Then the Bible was a collection of scrolls, each containing a single letter or history or group of psalms. But it was still the Bible. Then the Bible was a series of codices, large …
I love Bible studies. I love sermons. Both have their place and both can be tremendously beneficial in the life of the church and the spiritual diet of the believer. But I’ve observed that some sermons are actually Bible studies and some Bible studies are actually sermons. Though I will grant there can be a fine line between the two, I find it helpful to force myself to distinguish between them, especially when I am asked to lead one or …
Christians are people of the Word, men and women who live their lives according to its every precept. The Bible is the revelation of God to display his character and to show what it means to live in conformity to him. It is an inestimable privilege to have access to the mind and will of God. Yet while many people pay homage to the Bible, few love it. How can you know if your love for the Bible goes beyond …
Whenever I begin to read a new book, I immediately look to the opening pages for a clear statement of purpose. Why did the author write this work? What sets it apart from others? When it comes to Andy Naselli’s How to Understand and Apply the New Testament, he wastes no time. Here are his opening sentences: “I love God, and I love studying his Word and his world. I wrote this book to help you study the New Testament, …
In general, there are two approaches to daily Bible-reading: intimacy and familiarity. Intimacy with the Bible comes through slow, meditative reading that focuses on small portions—deep study of key books, chapters, and verses. Familiarity with the Bible comes through faster reading of much larger portions—the entire sweep of the biblical narrative. Both are wonderful approaches to the Bible and Christians thrive on a healthy mixture of the two. There is great benefit in knowing the Bible as a whole (familiarity) …
The gospel has a kind of logic to it. According to Sinclair Ferguson, it always holds to one important rule: Divine indicatives (statements about what God has done, is doing, or will do) logically precede and ground divine imperatives (statements about what we are to do in response). Any actions God requires us to take are grounded in his own actions. Simple, right? The trouble is that we are prone to reverse this order into a formula that says “If I …
You probably heard what happened recently with the ESV, the English Standard Version of the Bible. In August, Crossway, the ministry that publishes the ESV, announced that “the text of the ESV Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions printed and published by Crossway.” In other words, the text had become permanent and would undergo no further changes for the rest of time. Controversy ensued and on September 28, Crossway reversed their decision. President and CEO Lane Dennis wrote, “We have …
What makes holy people holy? What makes unholy people unholy? To a large degree it is what fills their minds and their hearts. This is why the battle for holiness is first a battle to flood your mind and heart with the right things, the best things, and why it’s equally a battle to avoid flooding your mind and heart with the wrong things, the worst things. So let me ask you, when it comes to what you see, what …
It happens to all of us at one time or another. There are times when we wake up eager to get into God’s Word, when our times in the Bible are an absolute joy and thrill. We hope, we wish, we pray that these times will never end. But they do. At times we wake up with no desire to open the Word. We find to our sorrow that the joy and thrill have given way to cold duty. I …
Have you ever noticed that some of our sorest temptations arise around God’s greatest gifts? Food, money, sex, ministry, authority—all of these can be used for such good, yet we consistently find they are attended by such difficulties. That is life in this sinful world, a world in which we turn blessings into curses, gifts into temptations. God’s gifts so quickly threaten to displace the One who gives them. God does not appreciate competition. We find this all over the …